I can't find the thread I started yesterday so I'll continue here.

I had my car's alignment reset yesterday. I originally had the car setup with a descent amount of negative camber. It was within spec, but a bit heavy on the negative side. What I was noticing was a lot of road wondering. It wanted to follow the crown or grade of the road a lot. I think quite a few others on here have the same complaint. I felt like I was constantly correcting my center line.

My camber was originally set at -.8 degrees on both left and right sides. I had the shop take it back to -.35 degrees and reset my toe. It's not a drastic change, but makes a big difference in how the max tracks.

Most of the road wondering has stopped. The car holds center line much better. I'm not constantly correcting it anymore, I can even drive with one finger on the wheel now.

My suggestions to all is to make sure your camber is no more then -.5 degrees. If you can't get it better then that when your dropped, consider camber bolts to help you out. The Maxima doesn't have the best front suspension, keeping the car closer to the ideal settings is important. Nissan says the nominal setting for camber is -.25 deg. and the acceptable range is from +.1 to -1.

Working with a good alignment shop helps a lot when your tweaking the front end. Most shops will tell you that camber isn't adjustable on our cars. If you run into that, go someplace else for service.

Tom

 

changing the camber is one way to get it to follow the road a -1 camber setting is usually best for tire wear. Another way to to get stability is to set the Caster(best handle results I can't remember if it was + or - ) but dont set it wrong or you'll get significant understeer, and setting it the right way too much results in oversteer, the key is to find the happy middle where you get satisfactory directional stability and improved handling

 

Unfortunately there's no way to adjust caster on our cars. If it's out of spec, something is bent.

 

Um, no.

If all you are concerned about it tire wear, the best camber setting would be 0 degrees.

This means that the tire is perfectly sratight up and down.

-1 degree is typically used as a good compromise between quick handling and good wear.

 

I find that any deviation from 0 degrees camber, and I get poor inside tire wear. Car handles much better with 0 degrees camber than -1, from my experience, and I've tried it all with my camber bolts.

 

After I put my new shocks in my caster has changed on both sides from 2.6 to 2.3. Just want to let you know that. I don't know the reason for that though.

Peace.